EU urges airlines to sort lost baggage mess

The European Union transport commissioner, Antonio Tajani, has pleaded with airlines to address the very serious issue of lost luggage that blights millions of travellers every year.

“It’s a very serious and very important problem. The situation is far from satisfactory. Some bags are just never recovered. Luggage is lost or delayed for a host of different reasons, including faulty barcode readers, inattentive airline employees, theft and illegible luggage tags,” said Mr Tajani.

A mind blowing 32.8 million bags were lost last year in figures released by SITA Inc. a company that offers technology solutions to the air travel industry. Surprisingly that number is actually down from a record high of more than 42 million in 2007. Each day in the EU 10,000 bags go missing or are delayed on average and one in 3,000 lose their bag for good.

Lost luggage causes major headaches for passengers and airlines every year not to mention the financial side. The drop of ten million less bags lost for 2008 against the previous year saved the industry around £563 million so it is in everybody’s interest to resolve this problem, or flyers can follow the example of Mr Tajani and only travel with hand luggage.

Thanks to www.dailymail.co.uk for the above quote, for more details on this article please visit their website.